Public Whip Count

March 03, 2008

Obama's Christian case for gays (II)

Posted by: Chris

For the second time in as many weeks, Barack Obama has cited his Christian faith as justification for favoring equal rights for gays.

But unlike last week, when he made a general appeal to treating gays in a "Christian way," this time Obama argued that Jesus' Sermon on the Mount supported civil unions for same-sex couples. According to the anti-gay Christian News Service, Obama said this in Nelsonville, Ohio:

I will tell you that I don't believe in gay marriage, but I do believe that people who are gay and lesbian should be treated with dignity and respect and the state should not discriminate against them. So I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other.

I don't think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.

Obama was never more specific about what in particular in the Sermon on the Mount justifies civil unions, but it is most likely that he had in mind passages like the Golden Rule ("Do to others as you would have them to do to you") or warning against judging ("Do not judge or you too will be judged.") The reference to Romans, of course, is to the specific admonitions against homosexual conduct contained in Paul's letters to Rome.

I generally agreed with Andrew Sullivan that Obama opened an important new front in the argument for gay rights by turning the religious opposition to our equality on its head. But I worry about this latest reference to specific passages in the Bible to justify a specific demand for equality. The danger is that doing so opens up the debate over civil unions into one of dueling of biblical passages, rather than the Constitution's purely secular guarantee of equality.

Or, as Marc Ambinder puts it, "Obama's reference was casual, and in referencing scripture he's committed the same (venial) sin that liberal religionists are always cataloguing as coming from conservatives: that they slip contextless biblical phrases into their political stump speeches and degrade the meaning of both."

I don't see a problem. Despite the separation of church and state and the secular constitution, no one ought to kid themselves into believing that a presidential candidate's religious faith isn't important to a majority of the American electorate. I doubt Obama would keep talking about his faith if being accused of being a Muslim wasn't a smear tactic.

I'm not a member of any institutional religion, but I can admit that Jesus was a great leader. All throughout this campaign Obama has invoked the words of great leaders to deliver his message of hope and change.

He's not doing anything different here.

For me, marriage is spiritual. I don't care if he doesn't want to call a LGBT union marriage. I do care that he thinks that all people should be treated equally under the law.

We need to get over the semantic argument. Call it whatever you want to call it, but don't discriminate. Language is powerful but it isn't as powerful as the rule of law.

No, the semantic argument is important because deeit is something we should not accept. Is Obama definitely on the right side compared to others? Yes. Are Civil Unions a step up? Yes. Are civil unions equal to marriage? No; the NJ legislature has found so a little too late.

And no, religion should not be a test for office. Will people do it? Yes. Is it right? No.

Furthermore, marriage may be spiritual for you, but the legally promoted version is not. Civil marriage does not equate religious marriage.